* Kathy Salvi was elected chair of the Illinois Republican Party today…

Today, The State Central Committee of the Illinois Republican Party elected Kathy Salvi as the next Chair by acclimation, with a start date of July 19th in accordance with outgoing Chairman Don Tracy’s resignation.

Chairman Tracy released the following statement following the election of the new Chair:

“Congratulations to Kathy Salvi for taking on this challenging yet important position to build a brighter future for Illinois. Republicans in this state are united behind President Trump and understand that the Biden/Pritzker agenda is wrong for our families. We will show in Milwaukee this week that we are unified in purpose - to make this state and this country great once again with a message of hope and prosperity for the future.”

Some people are mad…

Meanwhile the Eggroll salesman pic.twitter.com/6sA1FnVpRi

— ROSIE RIVETED (@ROSIERIVETED1) July 12, 2024

…Adding… ILGOP…

Following today’s vote by acclamation to elect Kathy Salvi as the next Chair of the Illinois Republican Party, the Chairwoman-Elect released the following statement:

“It is an honor to be recognized by my fellow Illinois Republicans as the next Chair of the Illinois Republican Party. As we prepare to nominate the next President of the United States, Illinois stands as a testament to what Democrat governance can do: out of control cost of living, rampant crime, and rife with corruption. Illinois Republicans will stand and fight for our conservative ideals and set this state, and nation, back on the right track.

Thank you Chairman Tracy for your commitment to this State and our Party.”

…Adding… DPI…

In response to the election of Kathy Salvi as the new ILGOP Chair, the Democratic Party of Illinois issued the following statement:

“We are not surprised to see the ILGOP pick a far-right extremist to sit at the head of their party. However, we are surprised that they chose someone whose draconian views on abortion will almost certainly drag down their entire Republican ticket. The ILGOP is littered with anti-abortion extremists, but it is now chaired by someone who once opposed abortions for victims of rape, saying, ‘abortion only adds insult to injury.’ The election of Kathy Salvi is not just a threat to the ILGOP’s ill-fated ticket, but to women all across our state.

Kathy Salvi’s extreme stances on healthcare, immigration, and women’s rights are fundamentally at odds with the values of Illinois working families. Salvi will fit right in with the modern-day ILGOP as she is no stranger to losing elections. We defeated Kathy Salvi and MAGA extremism across Illinois in 2022, and we are more determined than ever to combat the ILGOP’s far-right agenda at the ballot box this November. While the ILGOP is in turmoil, we are focused on electing leaders who will enhance access to affordable healthcare, defend reproductive rights, and promote inclusive policies that benefit all Illinoisans.”

Kathy Salvi, who was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for U.S. Senate against Sen. Tammy Duckworth in 2022, has consistently aligned herself with far-right ideologies that Illinois voters have repeatedly rejected. Her failed Senate run underscores the state’s rejection of her regressive policies. Now, as the new ILGOP Chair, Salvi’s leadership threatens to drag the party even further into the depths of extremism, away from the values that define our diverse and inclusive state.

* Illinois Times…

Nine months after cash bail ended in Illinois, the state is taking its first steps in publishing the data that crafters of the bail reform law saw as essential to judging its effectiveness.

The data shows that judges in the 75 counties served by the Illinois Supreme Court’s Office of Statewide Pretrial Services had collectively issued failure-to-appear warrants in just 5% of more than 28,000 court dates as of Friday. Judges had approved about 63% of petitions to detain a defendant pretrial that were sent to them by prosecutors.

The OSPS, launched in 2021 to provide things like pretrial safety assessments and electronic monitoring for 75 of Illinois’ 102 counties, published the data in a new dashboard this week. It represents a key – but still early and incomplete – step in tracking Illinois’ progress as the first state to fully end cash bail through a wide-ranging criminal justice reform known as the SAFE-T Act. […]

The data showed that about 52% of cases that were subject to an OSPS pretrial investigation contained at least one offense considered “detainable” under the SAFE-T Act. As of June 28, prosecutors had petitioned the court to detain the defendant in 62% of those cases.

The fact that judges approved 63% of those petitions, [retired Cook County Judge Cara Smith] said, was evidence the system was working.

*** Statewide ***

* Crain’s | Retail marijuana lottery winners avoid losing their licenses: Just one winner of a cannabis dispensary license is at risk of losing it today when a deadline hits for pot-shop licensees to have found a location for their stores. It’s a far lower number than many had feared. The state used lotteries to award 185 new dispensary licenses in the summer of 2022, which would nearly double the number of marijuana shops. Winners originally had up to a year to get stores open or find a location, but the deadline was extended last year by legislators.

*** Chicago ***

* Block Club | As Tent Cities Are Cleared, Unhoused Residents Ask Why It Took DNC For City To Offer Housing: Encampment residents told Block Club city outreach workers have been visiting in recent weeks to offer them rooms in coveted city-run shelters, including the former Tremont Hotel, 100 E. Chestnut St. in the Gold Coast, which was bought by the city last year and has only 60 beds. Those who accept the beds can keep them until Aug. 31, Berg said. The convention is Aug. 19-22.

* Jinx Press | 14th District Oath Keeper cop interfered with DCFS investigation, removed from SWAT for unknown incident: As detailed in that investigation, Sergeant Nowacki was suspended for three days in 2008 after sending insulting, racially charged emails to a Black community member in Englewood who was soliciting donations for area families. Rather than serve the suspension, Nowacki forfeited three days of banked compensatory time. Records detailing a December 2020 incident, however, also illustrate his disturbing animosity on duty toward a Department of Child and Family Services worker. The worker, identified as a Black male, filed a complaint after a well-being check where Nowacki was belligerent.

* Tribune | Mayor Johnson to name former progressive North Side alderman Shiller to zoning board: The former alderman — a close ally of current 46th Ward Ald. Angela Clay — was both lionized and lambasted for campaigning as a “champion of the poor” in Uptown as it underwent much transformation. Johnson tapping her addresses his stated values on railing against rich elites while also potentially smoothing over an earlier snafu with a homeless shelter proposal in Uptown that failed.

*** Cook County and Suburbs ***

* Shaw Local | Joliet police officer wins part of federal appeal in privacy lawsuit case: A federal appeals court reversed the dismissal of a Joliet police officer’s claim that a detective intruded on her privacy by intentionally accessing a nude photo on her cellphone. […] The ruling followed an April 3 court hearing where the Will County search warrant for the officer’s phone was sharply criticized by U.S. Circuit Judge Thomas Kirsch. […] “I can’t believe a judge signed this warrant to say, ‘You can search the entire contents of someone’s phone to look for one text message.’ And then McKinney just happens to be searching around in Cellebrite. …And guess what? He happens upon the naked pictures that everybody is talking about in the police department. It’s weird. It’s troubling, right?” Kirsch said.

* Aurora Beacon-News | Aurora to buy seven properties along Bilter Road: City officials have said they are interested in assembling the land in the hopes of marketing it to a residential developer, in an effort to keep potential industrial uses out of what the city considers more of a residential area. Officials have said an industrial user was interested in the properties, and would generate too much truck traffic for the area.

*** Downstate ***

* BND | $20 million Belleville training center part of vision to make Illinois a manufacturing hub: Construction of the academy on the northwest corner of the Belleville campus began in September 2022. Now outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment, the facility will officially open its doors in the upcoming semester to provide students with more training opportunities in the growing manufacturing sector. According to a recent Deloitte study, U.S. manufacturing could need as many as 3.8 million new employees by 2033 as investment drives the sector’s growth, but half of those jobs could go unfilled if workforce challenges aren’t addressed.

* WCIA | Protestors rally at Sangamon Co. Sheriff’s Office after woman’s death: Two sheriff’s deputies responded to [Sonya] Massey’s home just after midnight on July 6. Family and friends at the rally say Massey was the one that called the police. She was allegedly worried there was someone trying to break in, according to the county. After being on scene for half an hour, one of the deputies shot Massey. She was taken to the hospital, where she died from the gunshot wound, according to the Coroner.

* Capitol City Now | Attorney Ben Crump retained by family of Sonya Massey: Attorney Ben Crump, who specializes in civil rights and personal injury cases such as wrongful death lawsuits, announced Thursday the family of Sonya Massey has retained his services. Some of the well-known cases Crump has been a part of include Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown and George Floyd. Crump is known for taking on cases involving police misconduct. The investigation into Massey’s death by Illinois State Police is ongoing. Wednesday, Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell urged the public and media to be patient as ISP completes its investigation.

* WCBU | Peoria County Board isn’t keen on a 15-year delay to build new landfill: There’s essentially two parallel stories happening in the ongoing landfill saga. On one track, the regulatory process to start construction of the new landfill is still slowly moving forward. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources doesn’t believe abandoned underground mines pose an impediment to continuing development on the proposed site, but the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency still needs to sign off.

* KSDK | ‘It’s shocking’: Gov. Pritzker after Alton sinkhole swallows soccer field: “We’re working very hard to make sure that’s not a problem going forward,” [Pritzker] said. “Of course, we got the federal government involved. We’re going to make sure we’re doing everything we can. It’s shocking, really. I’m so glad nobody was on the field when it happened. But, the question is why did it happen, and what is the federal government going to do to make sure it never happens again?” Our newsroom has seen chatter online and reporting by other news outlets that the Alton sinkhole is growing. Our reporter checked in with a representative for the New Frontier crews on the ground to verify this on Thursday. The company representative tells us the sinkhole itself hasn’t grown in size since the initial collapse.

*** National ***

* AP | Small Nashville museum wants you to know why it is returning artifacts to Mexico: When Bonnie Seymour took a job as assistant curator of Nashville’s Parthenon museum, one of the first things she did was to look through the collections. Among paintings by American artists and memorabilia from Tennessee’s 1897 Centennial Exposition — the event for which the Parthenon was built — she found a random assortment of pre-Columbian pottery from Mexico. The artifacts had almost no identifying information, and Seymour knew next to nothing about them. But she knew they did not belong in a Nashville storage room.